2: The National Anthem

There is most of a city between these two. The roads between them split and dip and end, frustrating any chance at a straight line. Concrete walls stop bullets, they swallow one's voice and deny one's image.

Other way round there is most of a planet with valleys and rivers, deserts and oceans, plains and canyons, and towns that read like punch lines on a map. Some of them make for adequate meeting sites.

4: Parallax

Looking at a stranger head on is always a confrontation.

There is no truth in battle.

Evan learns to look through things and around them.

6: Two Against Nature

Evan got out of the car and the surveyed the street. It was a crap scene. something starring Lee Majors on the way out. Extras casting had no real budget and Wardrobe was all newbies. These tiny towns were all the same: no hope for a decent meal or real conversation. Just a place for beer and cigarettes. And maybe some flashback candy, a Charleston Chew perhaps.

Kadrey always got out of the bus at these insignificant places. Sure, the man always needed a pee or a cigarette or soup, but there was real excitement for him in visiting these alien colonies. The tide of civilization had receded but these folks and edifices had held on to the soil with quixotic determination. A fascinating stain on the land.

8: Sky Blue Sky

They went Downtown on a Sunday.

Nothing going.

10: I'm Only Sleeping

Geography has a strange influence on the radio

Sounds become liquid and tactile

Voices turn to syrup

Putting forth great anger enrobed in great civility

Beats migrate to your sternum

Colonize your heart

And turn humours a golden hue

Radio is sonar

And every song

Is Answer

Is Illumination

Is Location

12: Theologians

FADE IN
Ext Night-A deserted highway in the middle of the night. It is very dark but not pitch black. A solitary Honda's headlights are the only things gliding down the macadam.

CUT TO
Int Night- Two men are inside the car. A haggard looking KADREY is at the wheel. EVAN is passed out in the passenger seat.

CUT TO
Highway-The Honda going down a hill. The headlights suddenly go out. The car pulls over.

CUT TO
Car Interior-Kadrey opens the door and gets out in the huff. The automatic light wakes up Evan. He is a bit disoriented. Off screen Kadrey is cussing up a storm and we hear him kicking the bumper and the hood.

EVAN:
What's going on man? Hey Kadrey. Kadrey! What's going on? Kadrey what the...

KADREY:
[tossing himself into the driver's seat] The lights are dead.

EVAN:

Lights? Both of them? That doesn't happen man.

In lieu of a response, Kadrey makes a frustrated gesture towards the front of the car.

EVAN:

How long 'til sunrise?

KADREY:

I look like an Apache chief to you?

Kadrey balls up his jacket, puts it under his neck and reclines his seat all the way back.

EVAN:

You really going to sleep?

KADREY:

If you let me.

EVAN:

Man, I'm wide awake.

Kadrey digs around under the seats and finds a flashlight. He hands it to Evan. He digs around some more and comes up with a book.

KADREY:

Here. Read.

EVAN:

[looks at the book] Where did you get this? Arthur Miller is ass.

KADREY:

I know he's ass, but it was only a dollar.

EVAN:

[sort of fascinated by the book now] Attention must be paid.

KADREY:

What?

EVAN:

Attention. Must. Be . Paid. He wrote that. That's some sentence. "Attention must be paid." It's like awareness, imperative, existence and economy. In that order.

KADREY:

Evan. Read. Sleep. Marvel. Just shut the fuck up while you're doing it. Please.

14: Gaucho

Right before daybreak, Evan found him in the sliver of space between two warehouses; Kadrey was crying.
"Kadrey, It smells like jizz and fried chicken. How you even breathing in here?"
"Please. Please don't tell anybody."
"Who'm I gonna tell. You're everyone I know."

16: Lucky

18: Sheep Go To Heaven

Chapter 1: Wherein our heroes are stranded

...

Chapter 2: Wherein brambles ruin an excellent pair of pants

...

Chapter 3: The lavender and champagne rescue

...

Chapter 4: Wherein a bond is formed

...

Chapter 5: The contagious dream

...

Chapter 6: Leaving the Lautners

...

Chapter 7: Wherein an option loses its abstract nature

...

20: What a Shame about Me

The heavy silver ball rolls up his spine

Rumbling

Picking up speed and mean

The gray loosens up

Ready to embrace the coming destruction

The end is blind

Skin gets the final solo

The silver ball makes no decision

It shakes a memory loose

It took a week to heal

And is propelled through the gray

Until it hits another cluster

The cold gritty wall at his back

Hot breath rushing out his nose

Waiting for Carl to give up

It's getting darker in his own head

And all sound is collapsing into pink

Standing in a stream

Water is not

One thing

But many snakes

Each with a slightly different coldness

The silver ball is the same

All over and to the core

There is a clear separation

Between the pole pushing up against his leg

And the leg giving up

What was a closed circuit is open

To the whole world

And the world to it

Communicating through pain

The silver ball

Does not loose speed

After a collision

Fifteen thousand pounds

Fifty four miles an hour

Feet off the ground

22: Kidsmoke

24: The Bends

The man owed them money

and he had money

too much of it probably

he was used to petty childish pleasures

Twinkies before dinner

"I'm not convinced he'll have it, Evan."

"1200 dollars? Not on him. Not likely. Don't get me wrong, we're not leaving town empty-handed, but you better let go of that figure."

"You make it sound like business; this is revenge."

"Revenge is for fucking Cro-magnon. This is not that."

"This feels like that."

"Kadrey, when I play by the rules, I adhere fully. He stiffed us and this is what follows. If so then."

"If so what. Why don't we drop it? We need milk money that bad?"

"The precedent: We give this guy the idea that you can treat labor a certain way then we are partly responsible for every moe he rips off from now till kingdom come."

"That's very Hammer and Sickle of you."

"Kadrey, that's a great idea. You wait here, I'll get hammers."

In the hours we stood there in the narrow shadow of the corridor, the rain teased us several times. Never enough to get wet, but we were moist the whole time; in combination with an unrelenting wind this kept me cold and lucid for every second of it. I counted the windows that offered up some view of the little scene we had planned. I noticed the ridiculous absence of the police force except for a magnanimous meter maid at sunset. I compared, several dozen times, how many seconds it would take our man to get from car to door and how many it would take us to rush from shadow to door and statistically we failed. I checked on that fat nut of fear suspended in my chest. I was not afraid of what Evan was about to do, I had seen him do it several times. You get used to anything. I felt miscast, quite frankly, for this little slice of noir, and something about being made of the wrong stuff, standing on some other man's mark, must have been the source of my fear. I say this because in the deep of my pocket was a pez dispenser as ontologically misplaced as I was in this never ending moment, and the fat nut was obscured every time I slipped a pez out of Deputy Dog's face.

26: Night by Night

On the way down

The body is the instrument

Fell by drink, fatigue, or violence

That describes an arc

A shift in perspective

With point of view doggedly intact

A paradox for moron

A short trip with a Keystone punchline

On the way out

There is usually a quiz

A pretty pointless one word query

With answers that devolve into explanations

Then strengthen into stories

Anecdotes illustrated by scar tissue

Bunched up beneath epidermis

Discreet but fully present

On the way up

There is nothing

A blank page

An empty glass

A clearing of the throat

A kind word toward your mother

To set up the night's entertainment

28: Company In My Back

You all know about Zeno

Right?

So you'll understand

and I imply no condescension

by thus speaking

to the uninitiated

about the split between appearance and existence

But maybe split's too spiky a word

Anyways

The punch

To those not well versed

in

this

maneuver

Will present itself as a swift, simple action

And

In the presence

Of a

Master Killer

That may well be the case

But for anyone

Everyone

else

It is a thousand decisions

What looks to be

A single gesture

Designed in frustration

The desire

The desire is what's singular

And on the way to contact

Before the destination

And before that

There is doubt

Doubts

Constant corrections too quick

Too minute

To chart

No proof

Blood Pudding

Just Constant

Frustrated

Desire

For

Touch

30: Ashes of American Flags

32: Chain Lightning

Money's like rain.

Office buildings make for decent shelter.

Before the endeavor or after the failure.

They feed on light and dust.

34: Pretzel Logic

Time

is written

on skin

and

Skin

turns to

Shit

Time

is written

on skin

and

Skin

turns to

Shit

Time

is written

on skin

and

Skin

turns to

Shit

36: I Bombed Korea Every Night

"Goddamn man, that's gotta be one hell of a rock with the new sun on all that granite."

It's three in the morning and the sign reads "Keystone City Limits". Suddenly Kadrey remembers a bit of middle school history. He convinces Evan to stick around and see the sun rise on Mount Rushmore.

"No I can't remember where I'm from, and no I don't blame the chemicals, I'd guess that place didn't lend itself to remembering"

They find a picnic table to lay out their black coffee and ground beef tacos. In between four and five they are joined by a young man with way too many stories for his twenty eight years. He has the grace to leave before the silences start filling in the gaps of his autobiography.

"It's settled then."

They spend the morning tallying up at the picnic table. Every dollar, every assist, every rescue, every piece of bread or drop of blood. Things are almost even between them now, but they agree that Kadrey owes Evan a shirt. The button-up kind. With long sleeves.

38: West of Hollywood

Evan is sitting on the trunk of the civic blinking at the sun. He's hungry, but he's not yet ready to do anything about that.

Kadrey is twenty feet away, crouched down to create a shield against the wind. He sees the sparks and smells the gas but the fire won't come.

The cold is past the skin now and burrowing into muscle but Evan refuses to get off the trunk. He sits up and holds himself.

Kadrey, unlit cigarette between his lips, is standing defeated. He says something but the wind allows no bridge.

Evan sees Kadrey, twenty feet away, saying something. Or maybe just moving his lips. He wonders how close they need to be to beat the wind.

40: Gravity Always Wins

Perhaps this would have been a good place to begin.

This might have worked just as well.

And this. It would have been appropriate.

Perhaps first steps are best taken with eyes closed, in total darkness, with no anticipation of solid ground.